Release a smaller, cheaper Wireless Temperature Sensor for the Smart Radiator Thermostats
The recently released "Tado Wireless Temperature Sensor" is essential, in many scenarios, to have accurate operation of the Tado Smart Radiator Thermostats. Which, due to their proximity to the radiator, are not typically able to measure the actual room temperature themselves.
However, many find the price (£69.99 / 79,99€) prohibitive, especially when you often need to add one to almost every room. £30 to £40 seems to be an acceptable price point for many. They also find the functionality overkill and don't need touch buttons or temperature display.
Please consider developing a smaller, cheaper Wireless Temperature Sensor, removing the screen and buttons to allow for a smaller case. Making it suitable to sit on a table/shelf as well as able to mounted on the wall would also appease many.
Many calls for this can be found here, in the original request for an external temperature sensor, but which has now been marked as "Released" after the Tado Wireless Temperature Sensor was created: https://tado.vanillacommunities.com/en-gb/discussion/comment/12391/#Comment_12391
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I know what’s going to happen
Tado will remove the motor from the Smart Radiator Valve and release that as the cheaper sensor!0 -
Or alternatively, creat a API allowing 3rd party temperature sensors. Many smart home users has these installed already.6
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Would be great to equip all my rooms with a separate sensor on the most efficient location!4
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Hi @jcwacky,
I really like the Tado system, and hope that there will be an ongoing drive for a lot more development and innovation in the future.
I installed my system only a few months ago and have quickly realised that installing Tado TRV actuators vertically results in totally unsatisfactory temperature feedback and control. It's a shame that installing horizontally is not the recommended advice to all new customers.
The offset function is nice to have, but a fixed correction cannot correct temperature feedback issues due to radiant heat from a radiator. The latter is not a constant.
Mounting TRV actuators horizontally or installing separate temperature transmitters are the only viable options in my opinion. The latter is operationally far superior.
If it is viable for separate wireless temp transmitters to be designed and produced in line with indicated expectations (cost in particular) and the systems can operate successfully with many extra devices then I add my vote to this.
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If a low cost wireless temp sensor takes up one of the 25 limit then many houses will quickly run out of tado capacity.
I've already got 23 devices so couldn't utilise more than 2 extra sensors.-1 -
Even though I can't speculation on potential future hardware I am able to give this information:
- In 2021, it is highly unlikely that tado will release a cheaper version of the temperature sensor (probably without a user interface).
- When we introduced the current Smart Temperature Sensor, we looked at what potential customers were looking for in a device that could measure a temperature. Furthermore, we required the UI to be present since the Smart Temperature Sensor is the main sensing device that is included in the Wireless Smart Thermostat - Starterkits.
- The communities feedback about the current price point has been noted, and we are investigating options for the future.
- However, the 25 devices limit has played a role in the feature set and price point of the current Wireless Temperature Sensor, when we will look at a cost down version we also have to clearly identify how to communicate this potential 25 device limitation more clearly to prospected customers.
- Lastly, we have to look if it makes sense to introduce 2 devices that essentially have the same function (one with and one without UI), does that economically make sense for the company.
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I and many others want to see Tado succeed. They have a lot of significant challenges. The direction their management chooses can make or break them. Good leaders listen first, employ the right people and then set the right directions and goals however tough they may be. Let's hope they do...
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I would be very surpised if Tado are not currently looking into alternatives to having temperature measurement directly integrated into the SRT as per current design. The associated control issues are well documented and I would go as far as to say that the SRT's are close to unusable when mounted vertically immediately adjacent to a radiator.
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Completely agree with this, I have 6 smart thermostats and 12 smart rad valves in my system so have spent a small fortune already. Cheaper temp sensors would make the system function correctly. As there’s have said the rad valves don’t allow the room to reach the required temperature. I have set offsets but while that helps with keeping the rad on for longer it doesn’t solve the problem and just causes the rad to come on when it shouldn’t as it thinks the room is colder than it is. Can’t the setback be made to work only when the rad has been calling for heat for a while (not when the rad is cold)? Having rads come on prematurely isn’t exactly an energy saving feature.
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@Jurian wow, what a ridiculous reply. You are saying that your policy is to keep prices inflated to discourage people from purchasing more than 25 devices? You are limiting the usability of your system for the probably 99% of your customers who don’t have anywhere near 25 devices.
This is staggering and quite frankly if I hadn’t already invested £1200 plus on Tado devices and I read this I wouldn’t bother. Potential customers beware.
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I'm afraid @dennisoliver is right - if true that does indeed sound like a completely misguided method for determining price points. There are far more sensible ways of dealing with any issues which a small percentage of customers with more than 25 devices might encounter, than artificially inflating prices.
@Jurian I really appreciate your responses on here, but please communicate to your team that they need to listen to their customer base more carefully and have a rethink of the strategy. Tado will live or die by its community.
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I also go baffled when I read @Jurian 's response on Tado's reason for the inflated price. Would it not be more sensible to publish a disclaimer that adding many wireless sensors would impact the performance of the entire system?
We all know the reason why Tado went that route over clearly communicating the technical reasons to users (profits).
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@Jurian - This feedback is amazingly shocking.
I think it is fair to say that most visitors to the community forums are here because they are either customers of Tado, supporters of Tado, or potential customers of Tado. We all want Tado to build on it's strengths, to succeed, and to make our lives easier by making better products.
Your feedback regarding the price point of the temperature sensor is staggering. It sounds like you are saying that you created an expensive solution to one problem, but didn't really want to help too many customers, because you have another problem which would be exposed. And you therefore deliberately priced out a huge part of your core customer base.
This is an unbelievably bad service, and a terrible product development strategy.
It has been stated in several instances that the current radiator valves are not fit for purpose. We all know it. Temperatures fluctuate wildly while using these, and offset is useless for many cases.
If number of devices is an issue, what about Wifi? Zigbee?
What about integration with Smartthings (allowing 3rd party temperature sensors to override the Tado radiator temperature sensor)?
Your users need an alternative option, and I sincerely hope that Tado don't simply ignore this feedback.
Tado has created a well designed product suite, that looks good. The app is great. But at it's core, one of the key products simply doesn't work as designed (and sold), and is therefore misleading as the results are not as promised.
Surely surely surely... Your team must recognise this as an issue, and want to solve the problem.
Otherwise I fear Tado could be dying it's death already as others come to the market.
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A disclaimer would be reasonable; better would be to actually work on addressing the limitations. "Decreased battery lifetime" makes no sense to me, as how would adding more devices decrease battery lifetime of existing devices? Similarly "radio range issues becoming more prominent" is surely a function of distance, not the number of devices.
Of course we cannot blame any company for wanting to maximise profits. You may be right that their current pricing strategy was driven purely by this desire. Without more evidence that is somewhat speculation, but if true it would be very short-sighted and would not bode well for Tado's business intelligence. The best way to scale profits would be to increase their sales volume and customer base, rather than maintaining or even increasing their profit margins. The latter would hurt the former. Given that their technology is already relatively close to excellent or perhaps even best in class, they need to listen to and work with their community of existing customers to eliminate the most significant issues, and then the excellence of the products / service combined with word of mouth and the right type of marketing would ensure healthy growth. I find it amazing how many companies fail to appreciate the value of nurturing this community.
Anyway, rant over - it sounds like their internal alpha of an SRT with the motor removed may offer a decent solution to this problem. They really should open up the (local) API too like @MikOsle suggested and as mentioned here. Services can benefit hugely from integration with other services, and clearly this can't happen until an API is properly documented and supported. It's absolutely bonkers if this still isn't the case although I see that Home Assistant is able to connect to the cloud API somehow. As a newcomer to Tado it seems crazy to see much of this positive energy within the community being ignored / wasted!
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100% agree that the current €80 "solution" is much too expensive, and comes across as a money grab, not a customer-friendly solution.
Either another much less expensive wireless device, OR an adaptation to the existing smart TRV to allow a wired temperature sensor to placed at some distance (which ought to be much, MUCH less expensive, AND not require another slot in the wireless network).
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please add dynamic offsets, i.e. an offset of X when the radiator/TRV is off, and an offset of Y when the radiator/TRV is on. It's very naughty of Tado to sell TRVs to control room temperatures knowing actually the TRVs are totally inaccurate. Reminders of DieselGate and selling cars rigged to pass tests. I thought German companies were supposed to be the best?
Perhaps a solution is to open TADO so Zigbee devices etc can send room temp readings? Or Alexa via a routine based on a trigger from a IFTTT device.
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Tado° announced that it has sold over one million smart thermostats in Europe.
Now, what's the percentage of these users actively involved in the community? I am sure minimal!
Tado°is not a charity and if there is no return in investment there will be no change. Simply if the cost of releasing something new is too expensive and does not guarantee future income, there will be no change. No competition on the market, no change either. The best (easiest) way to increase profits is not by increase sales volume and customer base, but by increasing margins (no investment needed)
Don't expect too much from Tado°. You may be speechless or shocked. This is business!
Apple doesn’t listen their customers either, they develop & introduce new features. End users have no choice, but either accept or not. This is how they go forward. Listening customers is not the best for every business model.
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No competition on the market you say? What about Aqara? Pack of 3 humidity + temperature sensors = 56 EUR. Smart thermostat - 56 EUR. They also have nice application as I can see and many other sensors.
Now I'm starting to be disappointed that I bought 6 tado thermostats two months ago. Spent almost 600 EUR and not very satisfied with how it works with offset. But I don't want to spend another 500-600 EUR for set of sensors.
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If you are into programming then you could have cheaper wall thermostats and adjust offset every N minutes based on difference between wall temperature and the temperature captured by the Tado thermostat.
I just did that starting last night because I was also unsatisfied with offset. I have logged the offset settings over time since then and effectively these need constant adjustment (see something I posted this afternoon)
While this hack does the trick, I was not expecting that I would need to come to this, especially when products as expensive as Tado can be.
Before this switch to Tado, I used to have EQ-3 (since 2013) which provided a wall thermostat with a screen and buttons for around 30/35€ so I am pretty sure that Tado could come up with the same price range.
So far, I am very disappointed and I will probably return these Tado thermostats to go for chinese ones that are probably as good.
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@DJGlock I'm not sure if expanding the current v3+ range makes sense due to its limitations. New products, yes, but in this case tado° would have to expand its know-how and change its business model.
Aqara or Lumi United Technology Co., Ltd is a different story, you can't compare both businesses.
When it comes to Aqara sensors, I agree - it's solid equipment! The latest app v3 isn't great and requires more work. V2 was outstanding!
E1 is mainly designed for central heating and therefore can't be compared to tado° devices (although it supports hardware open window detection + external sensors)
When you say 'not very satisfied with how it works with offset' - do you refer to tado° RTVs? This may help https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0017V3P4O
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@rafm5 yes, I refer to tado RTVs. I've noticed something about these adapters, but did not get what is the best position for tado RTVs? Horizontal or vertical?
You also told before:
Tado° announced that it has sold over one million smart thermostats in Europe.
Now, what's the percentage of these users actively involved in the community? I am sure minimal!
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I'm not sure if expanding the current v3+ range makes sense due to its limitations. New products, yes, but in this case tado° would have to expand its know-how and change its business model.
So if not so many users involved in community and interested in using third party sensors, how do you feel - is it very expensive to support using them without harming tado business model?
@jmb77777 thanks for your feedback. I have similar feelings. Tado has nice ads, but only after several months user may realise that he or she will need additional sensors and their price is higher than thermostat price. Nonsense.
Ah, right, Apple do the same... Let's talk about using Apple business model when tado will have similar audience, number of products and capitalisation.
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@DJGlock the best position for tado SRT's is definitely horizontal. This reduces the extent of inaccurate temperature feedback due to the proximity of the SRT sensor to the radiator but is still not ideal. Using digital temp offset is a complete waste of time for obvious reasons. I have changed all radiator valves for new ones to ensure reliability as very old ones can stick. Took the opportunity to install all the new valves in the horizontal position. For those rooms where you prefer more optimal temp feedback then a wall-mounted thermostat is a better option. I have a number of these, but that clearly is an extra cost.
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Thanks, @Klaus_Ludwig. All my SRTs/TRVs/thermostats are in horizontal positions. I have to think what to do with it.
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re: Radiator thermostat sensor sensitivity to radiation from radiator, compared to Danfoss.
I had Danfoss electronic thermostats before Tado, and as I remember, they measure temperature (by an IR sensor) pointing into the room, hence not a measurement taken inside the plastic cabinet exposed to near by heat radiation.
Obviously this is a much more intelligent solution, and I never experienced a noticeable error due to its location next to the radiator. The Danfoss thermostat was not more expensive either, as I recall.
The Danfoss actuator seem to be less coarse in the regulation steps, and never shut off completely, unless there was an external heat source such as sunshine or our fireplace providing extra heat, and ballanced the heating elegantly. This means a much more steady regulation of my district heat unit, than with Tado installed.
H.
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I've been reading through this topic and I'm somewhat happy to see that I'm not the only one that is facing this craziness of Tado with their thermostats
The HUGE problem, is that even setting Tado to 25º which is the max they admit, this is not the max of my radiators by any means. So, basically Tado is only moving from Low temp to Med temp of my radiators, but anything near to High temp.
If Tado could simply be "simpler", like apart from the thermostatic function, gave the option to just regulate, like in a scale from 1 to 10, through the API, then I could easily set up any other thermostat with a bit of coding. But since the only variables that this Tado offer, are related to their relative Temperature measurements, I'm stuck to those 25º which are being measured with the thermostat of the TRV itself.
I'm going to be clear: this is a scam. No single TRV, has this kind of limitations forcing external mechanisms like the Temperature sensor to move forward. I can't understand why Tado has taken this direction.
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